Intel to discontinue PC motherboards

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. plans to stop supplying PC motherboards, with plans to gradually ramp down the business over the next three years, the company said.

"As Intel gradually ramps down its motherboard business we are ramping up critical areas of the desktop space including integration of innovative solutions for the PC ecosystem such as reference design development, NUC and other areas to be discussed later," a spokesman for the company said in an emailed statement.

Intel will not develop any new Intel branded desktop motherboards after completion of Haswell-based fourth generation Core products launch in 2013. The company said it would continue to support all products sold through the warranty period included with the specific product.

Intel has been supplying PC motherboards for more than 20 years. Until recently, Intel said, the business was largely focused on PC tower type designs. The company said the employees focused on PC motherboards would be redistributed to address emerging new form factors, including both desktop and mobile computers. Those engineers will also be refocused to expand Intel’s form factor reference design work and enable the company's partners to develop new computing solutions, Intel said.

With PC sales contracting last year for the first time and 11 years, Intel and other chip vendors are scrambling to capture more market share in non PC businesses. Intel has for years been trying to increase its presence in smartphones and other mobile computing devices, as well as embedded systems.

Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) said the desktop PC segment continues to be a major focus for the company with hundreds of products across many subsegments and applications. Intel expects the broad and capable desktop motherboard ecosystem—including Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and others—to support Intel’s roadmap and worldwide customer base.

The Intel spokesman declined to comment on the number of employees impacted by the decision to discontinue PC motherboards or the decision's anticipated impact on sales.

To bad. Going wireless for everything, especially for sensitive information is NOT a good idea. Way to many ways to monitor transmissions and to intercept, manipulate/hack into. Give me a hardline any day for my sensitive info sharing and business applications.

Dylan,
Interesting article but perhaps because I just started reading Aldus Huxley's "Brave New World" my linguistics sensibilities have been really tweaked by Intel's use of words here:
"...employees focused on PC motherboards would be redistributed to address..."
Things get redistributed. People get REDIRECTED. It's a subtle distinction, I know, but it's creepy that they did that. Maybe telling.

FYI, a decade or more ago, the mobo biz helped Intel get its latest CPUs and tech initiatives out in the market quickly.
Now ODMs are larger and more sophisticated, and Intel has fewer desktop initatives, given the nfocus on mobile.
I suspect ultrabooks (a form of notebooks) are fairly non-standard given the kinds of convertables, tablets and other form factors for them are still in an experimental stage.
Re chip sets: Now that the memory controller, PCI Express and Graphics are all in the CPU package there ain't much of a chip set business anymore.

I disagree. Note that their reference design for ultrabooks has certainly set a defacto standard in that market. Also, I see little difference in physical size and shape of tablets and phones. In fact, companies are quibbling about rounded corners vs. square corners.